The Belbury Parish Magazine

Ghost Box News

Through Passages of Time – The Hardy Tree (LP)

On translucent blue vinyl, individually numbered sleeves, limited to 500, with free download code inside. A beautiful package designed by Clay Pipe Music curator, Frances Castle for one of the finest homespun labels in the UK.

The Hardy Tree is the musical project of Clay Pipe Music’s founder Frances Castle, her first LP ‘ The Fields Lie Sleeping Underneath’ was the initial release on the label over five years ago.

Through Passages of Time soundtracks buildings and areas of London that no longer exist. Small places stumbled upon by accident, traced on maps, and illustrated in Georgian prints. Frequently visited pubs that have been rebuilt and renamed, the ship breakers yard decorated with wooden figureheads at Baltic Wharf, or the Thames Watermen living in the shadow of the Hawksmoor designed church at Horselydown. Lost places re-imagined and brought to life using clusters of sequenced Moogs, off Kilter electronics, vibes, and Mellotron – capturing the essence of the dark city and its more bucolic outer suburbs. This is a plaint to an older stranger London that is quickly becoming priced out and forgotten. Look carefully and clues to the ancient past can still be found.

For almost two decades now, Tessa Farmer has been evolving a new species of fairy. They represent the point at which science tilts into fantasy – as the sleep of reason produces monsters. In Fairyland is the first substantial scholarly volume devoted to Farmer’s work. Here, leading thinkers in the fields of animal art, natural history and gothic studies assemble to investigate the significance of Farmer and her fairies, covering aspects from their relationship to fairy traditions in folklore and art, to entomological precedents for the malevolent behaviours of her creations.

The second pressing of Pye Corner Audio’s Stasis LP is available from the Ghost Shop now. Also available on CD and Download.

Also new and exclusive to the shop is a Pye Corner Audio T-Shirt. It’s a two colour print of Julian House’s Stasis album artwork, on heavyweight vintage-orange cotton.

“A somnambulant trip through the cosmic void, Stasis is PCA’s strongest album to date.”Shindig

“…from start to finish the standard never once slips, ensuring Stasis is an album in which you can happily lose yourself for hours on end.”Kultur Magazin

“Rather than make up his own movies, Jenkins is happy to play the movies that are already running in our heads – and we are happy to let him do it. Every track shows the confidence of someone who knows exactly which buttons to push and when.”The Wire

Incidentally Pye Corner Audio provide a large part of the soundtrack for the chilling documentary film by Adam Curtis, Hyper Normalisation. Still available to watch at the time of posting here on the BBC iplayer. Essential viewing and maybe more terrifying now than when it was released during the old reality.

The Ghost Box Guest Shop is a section of our shop for records and merchandise from Ghost Box related artists, allied record labels and artists whose work overlaps with, or has inspired the world of Ghost Box in some way.

Glistens (LP)

New in the Guest Shop this week is a compilation of Chappell AV library music from the 1980s. Glistensis expertly curated for Lo Records by Ed Macfarlane of The Pattern Forms. To date this is a largely overlooked era in library music, its a highly inventive period that heralds the dawn of new digital technology in electronic music.

The compilation was mastered by fellow library music expert Jon Brooks (The Advisory Circle & Pattern Forms) who also contributes notes to the lovely looking, informative gatefold sleeve.

Gurdy Hurding (CD)

We also have a new CD album by Renaldo & The Loaf, Gurdy Hurding which comes 30 years after their last, The Elbow is Taboo. Over the course of 6 albums, spanning the late 70s to late 80s, Renaldo and the Loaf created of a unique sound world using an unguessable instrumental palette, collaged tape cut ups and wildly inventive, weird songs. Its a sound that’s simultaneously avant-garde, electronic, ethnographic, punk and oddly folk-ish. Renaldo & the Loaf will appeal to fans of The Residents or Position Normal. In fact they collaborated with the Residents in 1983 and released three of their albums on The Resident’s own Ralph Records. Their spliced and mangled songs were an early influence on Belbury Poly’s Jim Jupp.

The Forest / The Wald (CDR)

Finally we have The Forest/The Wald, the next instalment in the on going series of compilations put together by blog and CDR labelA Year in The Country. As usual its available in two beautifully handcrafted versions (both limited to 104 copies).

The Dawn Edition –A numbered, hand-finished white/black CDR album in textured recycled fold out sleeve with inserts and badge.

This chapter in the series explores tales and folklore of the woodlands. And features:Bare Bones, Magpahi, Polypores, Time Attendant, David Colohan, Richard Moult, Sproatly Smith, The Hare And The Moon ft Alaska, The Rowan Amber Mill, The Séance with Lutine, Cosmic Neighbourhood and A Year In The Country.

In last week’s show Jonny previewed Ed Macfarlane’s new compilation of Chappell AV library music, Glistens. And this week he’ll be chatting to Ed and Jon about their love of library music and their work as The Pattern Forms.

Ghost Box is currently Rough Trade’s label of the month, which means they’ve restocked available back catalogue in their stores and online. They still have a few copies of the RT exclusive green vinyl version of Pattern Forms “Peel Away the Ivy” left, if you haven’t managed to get one yet.

We’re very aware of the big gaps in the back catalogue and starting next year we’re hoping to reissue more titles and get some of the older CD only releases onto vinyl. Its going to be a fairly slow process to begin with, but the long term aim is to revisit and update all our releases.